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Like life in an uninsulated house, she thought Maybe like eneral "And then what?" she asked It made no sense, a lifespan of a feeeks did not add up to an annual ration of o? Dr Byron explained that no single butterfly ever made the round trip At winter’s end, the now-elderly butterflies in Mexico roused themselves and mated like crazy The nant singlefor milkweed plants, the sole sustenance that could feed the caterpillars There they laid their eggs and died without ever seeing their young Dellarobia was stunned by this tale, which sounded soap-opera tragic, like soen network She could tell Ovid liked telling it, too The rew up, and then flew north to repeat the drill, laying their eggs onThe monarchs they would normally see in these eneration Their offspring would go north to produce a third And only those, in the fall, would fly all the way to Mexico

"Where they’ve never been," she said

"Where they have never been," Ovid repeated

"How can they do that?"

He laughed "You’re looking at one crazythat saet it," Dellarobia said His "co she could faintly picture Not just an orange passage across a continent as she’d i fro flow, like a pulse through veins, with the cells bursting and renewing the e into sobs as she had in front of her in-laws that day when the butterflies enveloped her Hoas that even normal, to cry over insects?

It wasn’t easy for her to stay on the train of the conversation, even if they were running it for her benefit Pete explained that in recent years their studies had found the range was expanding northward Meaning the butterfly generations had to push farther into Canada to find happiness, Ovid added helpfully, probably astute to the fact that in her pay grade a rangedifficult too, he said The monarchs had to leave the Mexican roost sites earlier every year because of seasonality changes fro She wondered whether any of this was proved Clie, she knew to be wary of that He said no one corations Hundreds of factors came into play Fire ants, for example, had now come into Texas, where the monarchs were vulnerable Ants ate the caterpillars And far the milkweed plants, another worry he mentioned She wondered if she should tell Ovid about the landslide in Mexico But the students were ju it less than coraphy, roosts, host plants, overwintering zones, loss of soot, devastation She held to the vision thatover a continent, pulsed by its own internal engine

"They seem sturdy," she said "Seems like they always find their way"

"They respond to cues," Pete said "Temperature, solar cues, it’s all they can do It works perfectly until sorounds to fly north before the milkweeds come up, they show up to an empty cafeteria Or it’s too dry and they desiccate Every year that we record te populations in Mexico move farther up the mountain slopes to find where it’s still cool and o before you run out of mountain"

"And then I guess you co this was the answer "Is that so bad? They’re beautiful We don’t get a lot of bonuses around here, let ed a look with Bonnie and Mako Their silence embarrassed her

"They are beautiful," Ovid said evenly "Terrible things can have beauty"

"What’s the terrible part?"

He shook his head slowly, exactly the saht when Cub struck up the conversation by asking what he made of their butterfly situation "Terrible, beautiful, it’s not our call," Ovid said "We are scientists Our job here is only to describe what exists But we are also human We like these butterflies, you know?"

"Of course," Dellarobia said Good to know, being human was allowed

"So we’re very concerned," he said "Monarchs have wintered in Mexico since they originated as a species, as nearly as we can tell We don’t know exactly how long that is, but it is many thousands of years And this year, instead of the nor has put them here"

He took a bite of his sandwich, which appeared to be cream cheese on wheat bread, while she chewed on "thousands of years" In her experience, conversations of this nature always ended with the same line: The Lord moves in mysterious ways

What he said instead knocked the wind out of her "If you woke up one , Dellarobia, and one of your eyes had moved to the side of your head, hoould you feel about that?"

"Unh" The repellent ie filled her mind for a half second, before she could ward it off "I’d screain with"

"Well, that is about the suht look very pretty over there beside your ear But e see here worries us We are scrinchy, as you say"

All four of therave expectation, she felt as if her face really uess if Ovid was pulling her leg A relocated eyeball Were they serious? "Well, I guess I’d call the eye doctor," she said "I despise going That’s about what it would take to get me there"

She ate the lunch she had carried here in a plastic grocery bag because she didn’t have a nice little expensive backpack She didn’t have a nice little college education, either She’d just have to let the ser but felt it being swaroundwater in her yard Why did the one rare, spectacular thing in her life have to be a sickness of nature? These butterflies had been hers She found them, she’d showed the beloved and i she’d ever possessed Already she had ainst the heft of her faet to coiant ood looks, boots whose price tag equaled her husband’s last paycheck Now the butterflies were theirs too